TUCKED AWAY on the Côte d'Azur (the Mediterranean coast of southeastern France) lies Château Saint-Victor-la-Coste, one of the most idyllic places to while the hours. A vacation complex comprised of three cottages and one suite (in a 16th century castle), all available for rent, the Château is situated in the old village of St Victor la Coste (an equal distance between Avignon in Provence and the market town of Uzes in Languedoc) where you will find a boulangerie and épicerie
A KITCHEN in Puglia with concrete counter tops and sink; and a beautiful cake adorned with dusky-coloured roses are two things on our mind at the moment. Plus, five more things in this instalment of Things We Loved this Week, including Italian Greyhounds, Ina Garten’s favourite cheese shop, vegetable embroidery, and more...
IT'S STRAWBERRY SEASON and Wimbledon, which can only mean one thing: strawberries and cream. Have you been watching the tennis? Also, Summer Solstice was just a couple of weeks ago and we said a bittersweet good-bye to the longest day of the year. Here is a little of our lately: homemade gazpacho and June rose; pints on a sunny pub terrace and wildflower meadows; friendly llamas and gin and tonics and so much more...
THIS INSTALMENT OF 10 IMAGES features snapshots from Kyiv, Ukraine by Nastia Poberezhna. There are glimpses of her home, the door open to the terrace; a bouquet of bright pink roses against a raindrop-covered car window, a blurry glimpse of the city just beyond. There are hard boiled eggs and Saint Laurent coffee cups, pizza and peonies and the everyday moments of a life...
AFTER TRYING TWO sets of meals from a recipe box company over the past two weeks, this weekend we tried a new company that makes healthy meal kits and so far, the two meals we made were delicious! And, even more amazingly, P made the first and I made the second⏤and guess what? It actually turned out. Crazy right? In other news, finally had a chance to watch the 2014 film, The Theory of Everything ...
WE'RE TRYING out one of those food services that deliver a huge box of fresh ingredients to your home⏤enough to make five different meals from scratch, all packaged in separate numbered paper bags with recipe cards for each. It arrived on Saturday and the first meal we (actually just P) made was Cauliflower Mac and Cheese with Blue Cheese Crumb and Sriracha Drizzle. It was actually really good.
LATELY WE'VE been seeing a lot of dramatic marble or other stone elements as striking accent pieces in home décor. It could be an island or an entire countertop, a freestanding bath or bookcase, but whatever is chosen, it is meant to be the centrepiece ...
THIS BEAUTIFUL and serene home looks like it could be an apartment in Paris, but is actually a three-Story 1914 row house in Washington D.C. When the owners, Courtney and Mike Green, found it in 2017, it was dilapidated and in much need of renovation. They enlisted Jeremiah Brent, a California-based interior designer (and husband of Nate Berkus) to do the work ...
JANUARY LASTED a million days but February seems to be flying by. There is sunshine and birdsong, snowdrops, and today we saw a tree blooming with delicate white blossoms. It just as quickly clouded over and there were rainy spells here and there (it is England, after all), but overall, it's been feeling rather springlike. Of course, there are terrible floods again in the south, but hopefully all these weekend storms will pass by soon and we can look forward to warmer days ...
A SCHOOL FRIEND once remarked that I was good at seasons, and when I thought about it, I realised that she was right. I actually really do love to capture the feeling and moods of the changing seasons, the excitement that comes with arrival of the first snowdrops in winter, just as the days start to get longer, the way the sun's rays deepen in colour at sunset. And at the other end of the spectrum, when summer fades into autumn, we realise with the changing leaves and cosy evenings with their flickering firelight, that endings can be beautiful too. We learn, every autumn what it is to let go...
WE HAVE BEEN BACK to Edinburgh many times since we moved away in 2015, but it was not until this past visit in June did we notice how much things had changed in the city since we left, but more so, how much had changed just in the past year of lockdown. One of P's favourite pubs, Smithie's, where he would often go after playing football (soccer) on Thursday nights, closed forever, set to be turned into a block of flats ...
I READ SOMETHING recently that stated that the sales of colour cosmetics dropped 33% in 2020, and that sales of cosmetics overall dropped by 15%. While I did buy a few new eyeshadow palettes during that time despite not having anywhere to go (perhaps it was for the odd Instagram selfie), I did actually reduce spending on these items ...
THIS PAST WEEKEND was filled with sunlight and pink roses and late, late nights. We ate crab cakes and went for long countryside walks and took a bicycle ride to the pub up the hill overlooking the river. We read books and listened to the rain in the evenings and drank red wine to old music ...
YESTERDAY WE went on a long bicycle ride in the countryside, up and down hilly roads past wild roses and babbling brooks all the way to the castle ruins. It's only our third or so time out on our new folding bikes, and I've discovered that I have an unrealistic, romanticised version of what it might be like to go riding in the countryside: I would wear pretty things and not get hot or tired and arrive at our destination looking perfect.
Philosophy seems to be on a hiding to nothing. It has a 2,500-year history in the West and an extensive back-catalogue – of problems. There are questions about what exists, and what we know about it, such as: Do we have free will? Is there an external world? Does God exist? and so on. There are also questions of analysis and definition such as: What makes a sentence true? What makes an act just? What is causation? What is a person? This is a tiny sample.
